MRI are you?

MRI
Our first Sunday in China was interesting. Joseph has never had an MRI since Guatemala after his injury. One of the tenative plans is for possible surgery here, so they needed an MRI done. The MRI center is ajacent to the Qingdao Central Hospital. So off we went. We loaded up in the van with our driver Cliff and Dr. Lisa (Dr. Li Fenlin) and drove to the older area of Qingdao. It was a really great 45 minute drive. After arriving Tim went with Dr Lisa to pay the fee (850 RMB or US$122). One could fly here cheaper than getting an MRI in the US. The imaging equipment was state of the art and the technincians very professional. We've included a couple of the images. VERY INTERESTING! We wish we had educated eyes to understand what we were seeing. The Drs. will analyse them and we'll discuss the plans later in the week.

City Tour
After the MRI we talked Cliff into driving us around the city before returning back to the hospital. It was phenomenal. The coastline in beautiful and the city amazing, with a bay of the Yellow Sea on one side, beautiful ragged mountains in the distance on the other. You could see the European influence in the older parts of the city. Everywhere was new construction. . . at an unbelieveable scale. hundreds and hundreds of new high-rise buildings. This is an amazing place.

PT Evaluation
In the afternoon Joseph did his initial evaluation with physical therapy. Jason is his physical therapist. The PT area is excellent. It is on the main floor behind the little hospital mini-market. Since the Hospital doesn't provide food for the patients, there needs to be somewhere to buy stuff. If you need a bedpan or wet-wipes there is the place to go. And it is colorful!

Birthday Party
About 5:30 PM we participated in a surprise birthday party for one of the patients. It was great to get to meet all the patients and their family/support people. The staff is really great, highly educated, extremely competant, and lots of fun (but then Joseph has fun with whoever he is with)